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Pepsi must have dozens of agencies working on its behalf to bring it new ideas on a regular basis, but it appears the brand isn't content relying on these guys for its tech ideas, so it's created its own forum for technologists to bring their ideas directly to the brand.

The PepsiCo 10 is a two-day event, today is day two, where an invited set of tech companies get a shot at presenting their ideas to the company.

Here's how they describe it.

"PepsiCo will to bring together PepsiCo brand marketers, venture capital and media partners, category specialists and thought leaders for a two-day idea exchange on media, communications and technology.

The group will assess presentations from 20 finalist entrepreneurs and choose the PepsiCo10 from among them. Up to 10 entrepreneurs will be named the PepsiCo10 following the Summit's end and offered the opportunity to pursue a pilot project with a PepsiCo brand team.

In addition to entrepreneur presentations and judging, the PepsiCo10 Summit will include keynote addresses from top media, communications and technology visionaries."

As you can see from this video- the initiative is being driven by Pepsi's media, social media and digital technology guys.

It's interesting to see a brand make such direct moves and it's not doing it alone- helping them are; Mashable (for the coverage carrot) and Highland Capital Partners (for that all important cash).

Clearly there's a lesson here for agencies to find forums and opportunities to bring the best external thinking in the rapidly developing tech space to their clients attention

Posted by Ed Cotton There's a big push around the idea of craft and it's manifesting itself everywhere, especially in food. This is a movement against the sameness of mass production,the lack of humanity and personality inherent in these products. This film by The Scout about Mast Brothers Chocolate is really well put together, it might not win any comedy awards and it takes itself a little too seriously, but it shows just how passion, craft and story can come together to create a compelling brand.

The Mast Brothers from The Scout on Vimeo.

Posted by Ed Cotton Research work by Christopher Hsse and his colleagues at  University of Chicago has revealed some interesting traits about human behavior; namely that we are naturally inclined towards idleness to conserve energy, we would rather do nothing, but we are happier and less bored when we are busy.

Therefore finding hooks and ways to make people feel like they are busy or giving them the illusion of busyness is a huge business opportunity for experience creators.

One example given by BPS is making travelers walk further to pick up their bags, rather than making them wait at baggage claim. Given a task like walking to a destination is more pleasurable than simply standing and waiting.

This simple and somewhat obvious insight must explain the massive appeal and success of applications for phones and tablets.

The user feels that that these distractions will keep them occupied for a while and are pure examples of futile busyness, just the fact they exist and are easily accessible is probably enough for most users to hook them in and get them to trial. They are the "digital candies" of the information age.

While many of these apps might lack staying power, for the store owners like Apple, it's the constant stream of new apps and potential distractions that make the store exciting to users. The problem for Apple will come if the rate of application development slows and there are fewer and fewer newer and interesting applications to satisfy user cravings for futile busyness.


Posted by Ed Cotton While most categories demand obsolescence, perhaps too many corporations and brands are only too willing and eager to let their customers give up on the products too fast and send them to landfill. Clearly, there's a long-term sustainability issue with this, but also there's no real alternative, but what if there was?

I recently read about BMW's Classic Car Center, that restores back to working condition old BMW's and even Minis. It's a nice added touch for a brand that's manufactured a number of iconic models that it's owners love and cherish and want to keep in working order. It's likely to be a premium service and used by a tiny fraction of BMW owners.

What if brands could build up a scalable business re-furbishing their old products, and added a layer to this idea by making modular products that could easily be
updated and modernized at these centers?

Think of the categories that could be impacted beyond automobiles to fashion, furniture, computers, cellphones, gaming systems, etc...

This would be a radical change in the way we think about consumption and although a whole industry exists to refurbish, re-sell and repair old products, it's not branded and at the forefront of the brand experience. if brands were to get behind it and support and create the infrastructure, it would create a whole new brand relationship.

From the onset, consumers would be looking for brands through a different lens; they would be thinking about a lifetime of experience, they would be looking for reliability, for service skills and for the technological know-how to update when required. It's possible, that many of these updates will be done by software, but the area of hardware remains untapped.

While it would be a huge behavior shift to get people to value their old products over the shiny new ones, one big catalyst could be tax-based dis-incentives for disposal which might force people to value the old over the new.

It will be interesting to see what brands outside of automotive start offering re-furbishing services to customers and go out and actively push a whole new line of business.


Posted by Ed Cotton Recent rumors circulating in the news media suggest that HP could be ready to kill the Palm brand, or move it into the background.

Obviously, Palm had some cool technology and an operating system that could be of use to HP, but isn't the fact Palm isn't HP, interesting?

HP has spent millions on trying to make its brand cool and despite the Gwen Stefani sponsorship deals and Jay Z ads, it hasn't quite bridged the gap, it still seems like a stodgy, solid engineering company.

In a world where consumer electronics/phones and other gadgets are ostensibly fashion items, it's tough for HP to play effectively in this space.

Given that Apple is cool, surely HP could use some of its own?

I am not saying Palm was the coolest brand on the planet, but it was different and had an unusual take on the user experience. It also had a devoted army of loyalists who had worshiped the brand through thick and thin.

Again, when engineers and bean counters look at the issue, it's easy to vote for efficiencies and there's also a very subjective belief that the parent brand is better.However, given the complexities and challenges of this dynamic marketplace, HP could be making a mistake not re-energizing the Palm brand and putting some new meaning behind it.


Posted by Ed Cotton In the past, corporations might have called ad and PR agencies to solve their image problems. While these efforts may have papered over the cracks, they might have made companies feel good and feel like real change was happening. However, as well know, change happens from within and without changing the culture of an organization, little progress can be made.

The issue of corporate culture is a huge one and it's a big problem for a number of large players.

Here's a story from Fast Company today about Nokia's troubles.

"Many management posts are filled with folks who've been promoted through their incompetence (the classic Peter Principle). While Nokia's R&D is roaring along on rocket-powered roller skates, Risku believes many of the potentially world-beating ideas are ditched by managers who merely don't like them. Or else they are delayed and then tinkered with by unthinking staff to the point that they become flat and boring by the time they become real products."

It suggests to me that there's a market for a new type of agency- a cultural change agency.

This isn't the company you go to when you want to communicate your brands and your image. It isn't the company you go to to tell you how to improve your bottom line by cutting out costs.

It's a new type of company that helps you work out who you are and doesn't walk away, it stays with you; it helps, it motivates, it inspires and it brings the moving parts of the organization together.

Think of this new entity as a entirely new type of agency; one that inspires companies to change and get the best out of themselves by working from the inside out.


Posted by Ed Cotton In Adweek July 18th- Warren Berger wrote an interesting piece about the potential mid-life crisis of the ad biz.

"There are lots of tough questions companies must confront in dealing with a consumer who's more engaged, more informed and more concerned with social issues than ever before. Among those questions: What does the company stand for? What does it believe? How does it make its products and treat its employees? Is it being straight with us in its ads? All of these points are part of the larger conversation people are now having about brands."

This isn't a crisis inflicting advertising, it comes from somewhere, it's a corporate identity crisis- could corporations have lost track of their reason for being?

You sell stuff, we know that, but it's not enough.

What's your reason for being?

What do you want to do when you get to work in the morning?

Does you brand have a cause?

To the bean counters and the analysts on Wall Street, these things seemingly have nothing to do with the revenue and margin numbers they care about, but they do. The hard sell has gotten so pervasive and old, there's a load of white noise out there with people "selling", but doing nothing more. We are over-supplied with stuff and the noise that surrounds the perpetual consumer cycle is tiring people. They've found ways to cancel the noise and to find alternative sources of information. People want and need more and there's so much more brands and their corporations could do.

It seems like we've confused marketing with purpose, that marketing is something that helped us out when we didn't really have a clue about who we wanted to be and what we wanted our businesses to stand for.

Marketing was there to plug the holes and provide some sort of wrapping around the business. It created dreams, controlled thoughts and allowed business to make stuff and forget what they really stood for.

Sometimes marketing got close to capturing a real idea of what the brand and company stood for, there were moments when companies genuinely believed they were the "Human Element", or whatever tagline their agency gave them, but it was fleeting, they soon lost interest. They found it too hard to genuinely believe in the idea and they probably felt that consumers didn't really believe it. In the end, the marketing guys had created a hollow promise, something the brand or corporation couldn't and didn't want to live up to.

What about starting from the center and working outwards? Instead of asking your ad agency who you are, what about asking yourself some tough questions? This isn't a marketing function, it's a corporate function. It needs to start from the top and fan out across the organization, everyone plays a part because they are living proof of what the company believes in.

The time has come when brands need to stand up and be counted for something and they need to be disciplined and committed to that cause. They need to break free of the formula that's guided their thinking for 50 years and get back to basics. They need to find a truth that's something for the long-term, something that will be relevant today and in 20 years time and is real, honest and provable.

When the world around you is getting more confusing and scary by the day, you've got to be certain of who you are, without that, you are going to be lost at sea.



Posted by Ed Cotton David Fincher just made a movie that tells the story of how one of the world's largest media companies came into being, Facebook.

It's a celebration of the rise of geek power. What's interesting here is how the geek has moved from the meek and mild background character that survives only on their intellect, to Geek 3.0 as manifested by Zuckerberg, who won't let anything get in the way of his ambition.

Perhaps the movie will serve as a PSA; providing the inspiration for thousands of high school kids to become Geek 3.0s by studying math, computing and science and provide just what America needs to maintain its innovative edge.



Posted by Ed Cotton

Posted by Ed Cotton Planners are a fickle bunch and they are often searching for the next new thing to help them find the magic bullet to make real change. Suddenly planners worldwide are rushing headlong into a search to understand the world of behavioral economics; they are inviting economists to lunch, having them attend client meetings, building conferences around them and they are sending their planners all over the world to attend meetings on the topic.

Today, The Behavioral Economist is the Cabbage Patch doll of the Planning world.

Anyway, being a skeptic I was intrigued when I read the headline to Felix Salmon's recent Reuters column "Can Behavioral Economics Cause Real Harm". I thought Felix might have stumbled on a reason why the FDA might need to get involved or at minimum, there would be a senate committee hearing on the topic. Sadly, I was wrong on both counts, he was merely describing the apparent interest in the area from new British PM, David Cameron, who'd been looking at some US experiments to reduce energy consumption.Mr. Salmon discovered that the behavior change in these experiments wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Of greater importance, was his concern politicians might resort to behavioral economics as an easy fix for problems that require more complex solutions.

Wanting to learn more about these "experiments", I checked out a NYT piece about the thing that got Cameron interested. It was nothing startling, or entirely surprising; when a Sacramento utility started sending customers comparison data to their customers, which compared their usage to that of their neighbors and the most efficient neighbors, consumption went down.

While this might being heralded as a startling insight; gaming and social effects should hardly be new news to most planners. If you aren't actively thinking about how to use both these as behavioral levers for your brands, something is wrong.

Of course, Behavioral Economics is a lot more complex than I am making it out to be, but hiding behind a sexy new discipline isn't a panacea, nor is it an alternative to doing the stuff you've always done even better and with more rigor than ever before.

Chances are, if you do this and do it well, you will stumble across the very same thing that the Behavioral Economists with their years of research and academic study have found.


Posted by Ed Cotton